Miscellaneous and Useless Information

From July 4 to August 4, I watched four movies in the theater, which is probably more than the previous two years.

Transformers. Better than I expected — the action and graphics were quite good (of course), and the acting wasn’t bad (maybe because my expectations were low). It’s done amazingly well at the box office, so you can be sure a sequel is in the works.

Ratatouille. The best of the first three movies I saw. The storyline was well conceived and beautifully executed; it felt genuine, never hokey. I’m surprised it hasn’t as well at the box office as, say, Cars. And you can’t draw a rat cuter than Rémy.

The Simpsons Movie. A must for Simpsons fans. The plot didn’t exactly have any surprises, but the Simpsons has always been about the small moments, and this movie delivered. I wished I hadn’t seen the trailers though: that took away jokes like President Schwarzenegger (“I was elected to lead, not read.”) Of course, I also went to the Kwik-E-Mart in Mountain View and took loads of photos.

The Bourne Ultimatum. I hadn’t seen the first two Bourne movies, so I got an assignment. The night before I watched it with two friends from high school, we watched The Bourne Identity. Then I borrowed The Bourne Supremacy and watched it the next morning, before finally seeing The Bourne Ultimatum that afternoon. 24 hours of Bourne! I enjoyed all three of the movies — very well crafted action thrillers. There are some great scenes, such as when Jason Bourne is trying to choreograph a journalist’s safe passage through a London train station.

But I must admit that I am an action movie wimp: I totally get sucked into movies; the deaths of characters, among other things, really affect me. So before seeing any of the movies, I read the plot summaries in Wikipedia. Therefore, I already knew which characters would die. But that allowed me to enjoy the movies more, because even though I knew roughly what would happen, I still had to watch the movie to find out how they happened.

In between, there was also a little bit of high culture: Shakespeare in the Park in Cupertino. The San Francisco Shakespeare Festival put on an excellent production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I particularly liked the modernistic staging — the angels were punks, and Lysander wore a Public Enemy T-shirt.